Ross Ohlendorf's arbitration case is another small victory for baseball's stat geeks who are trying to educate the world about the value of advanced statistics.

This trend started with Tim Lincecum and Zack Greinke winning Cy Young awards in 2009 despite collecting 15 and 16 victories, respectively, and despite pitchers in both leagues finishing with better "traditional" numbers. It continued this past season when Seattle Mariners righthander Felix Hernandez won the AL award with 13 victories, even though the league had a couple other candidates—David Price and CC Sabathia—with considerably more wins.

Ross Ohlendorf went 1-11 with a 4.07 ERA for the Pirates in 2010. (AP Photo) AP

Ohlendorf can be added to Lincecum's, Greinke's and Hernandez's group. Not for his dominance. Not even close, actually. But include him with those pitchers because the Pittsburgh Pirates righthander won his arbitration case Wednesday despite a 1-11 record and 4.07 ERA in 2010. Ohlendorf was awarded $2.025 million after the Pirates offered him $1.4 million.

Deeper analysis of his numbers shows Ohlendorf wasn't nearly as bad as his win-loss record; like Hernandez, he just played for a pretty awful team. Ohlendorf had a 1.385 WHIP, which isn't great but probably warrants more than one victory. And his WAR levels were both above 0—baseballreference.com has at two wins above replacement and fangraphs.com has him at 0.9 wins above.

For those still struggling with the value of such stats and who still believe a pitcher's record and ERA are the only stats needed to determine his worth, this isn't to say Ohlendorf merits Cy Young consideration. It just says he probably deserved a raise from his $439,000 salary and that he is better than a one-win pitcher normally is thought to be.

In addition, it shows that arbitration panels that sometimes can be blind to advanced statistics might be starting to come around to the importance of them. There's a good chance Ohlendorf, who attended Princeton, versed his lawyer in the unimportance of finishing the season 1-11.

And, sure, there is a chance the Pirates, a club that hadn't gone to an arbitration hearing since 2004 and has shown plenty of ineptitude in recent years, totally botched this thing and had the equivalent of an underpaid, overworked public defender representing them.

The other option seems far more likely, however: Even people that don't have a history of buying into advanced stats no longer can ignore their worth.